


Overcome

by hiddencait



Series: 2013 Fic Finishing Challenge [3]
Category: Resident Evil (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen, Gen-fic, No Romance, gratuitous zombie violence, oc-insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:19:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/pseuds/hiddencait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dannie thought she’d seen the darkest parts of the world while working as a military psychiatrist and disaster counselor. But nothing could have prepared her for the apocalypse that struck Raccoon City.</p><p>Dannie’s only hope lies in her old war-zone habits: stay close to the armed men who’ve promised to protect her, and pray like hell she can keep up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Climbing Up and Falling Down

**Author's Note:**

> This was part of my Fic Finishing Challenge - none of which actually managed to get finished. Cue WIP Big Bang to the rescue. As of April, I'll be posting the remaining chapters, hopefully with some awesome art to go along with it.
> 
> I've re-vamped the summary as well. When I first started writing this several years ago, I had a helluva time trying to come up with a summary. Hopefully this one is intriguing!
> 
>  
> 
> So, just to give you a head's up: this will in fact be OC centric, but don't worry, there's no romance intended here. Mostly I just had the bunnie smack me over the head at this point in Apocalyse, and before I knew it, Dannie had come to life and was damned insistent that she get a chance to tell her story. So here's hoping yall like it!
> 
> One quick warning, there will be some definite cussing happening. The movies ARE rated R for the most part after all.

The two women didn't speak as they pounded up flight after flight of stairs, panting and puffing and all but whimpering at the horrific groaning sound of the monsters clamoring up behind them. Dannie clung to the stair rail, dragging herself up it and trying to land as gently as possible on the metal stairs in an attempt to protect her stocking-clad feet. She'd had shoes when she'd left her office, rather cute little mules actually, but when Tess had come screaming down the hall with the crowd of freaks right behind her, Dannie had kicked her shoes off immediately to run. It just wasn't worth keeping them; not when every little bit of speed and agility might mean staying alive. She needed all the help she could get frankly; she was in decent shape, but she'd never been a runner. That had actually been their reason for heading for the stairs: Dannie had hoped the climb might be a bit of a challenge for the shuffling things behind them. It had worked to a point... but only to a point.

Just a few steps below her, Tess tripped again in her own expensive and thoroughly impractical pumps, demonstrating the reason the pair of women weren't quite as far ahead of the pack as Dannie had hoped. Tess had refused to give up her own shoes, and the longer they climbed, the more Dannie had a bad feeling her secretary's shoe fetish might end up killing them both.

Not that in the long run, Dannie was doing all that much better than the other woman. Her pantyhose didn't exactly offer the best traction, and between her pencil skirt and her tailored blazer, her movement was definitely hampered. She spun around a landing and in that brief moment of rest on the flat surface, she found herself wishing that for once she'd watched the fucking news or at least the weather before she'd left her house like her neighbor Terri was always harping on her to do. Not that she thought there had been any word of this mayhem on the morning edition, but she might have at least avoided the long sleeves in response to the heat wave. She missed her next step due to the damned skirt and landed hard on one knee. That was definitely going to leave a bruise. Oh to be wearing pants, she bitched silently, saving her breath for the climb. Pants and boots. Her favorite pair of flat soled boots that she could do fucking cartwheels in. Those would have been very, very nice to have right about now.

She forced herself to ignore the fact that her knee was now bleeding and kept climbing back up the next flight of stairs. She paused at the top, wondering too late if the stairs had really been such a great idea. They were almost to the roof, and where they hell they'd go from there she couldn't even begin to imagine.

She glanced back over her shoulder to see Tess fall again, her heel having broken off completely. The idiot just sat there for a moment, practically mourning her shoe.

"Tess, come on! You have to fucking move!" Dannie shook her head and forced herself back into motion up the last flight of stairs. She reached the roof entrance and slammed into the door, wincing as it remained firmly closed. "What the? Locked?" she moaned in a panic, but then saw the keypad and rushed to it, praying her security codes would work on the damn thing. The code did work, to her infinite relief, and she ran back and shoved the door open, turning to check for Tess. She cringed at the sight that awaited her. Tess was struggling to climb up the last few steps and across the landing, shoving and hitting and doing everything in her power to get herself out of the grasp of the horrors that had finally caught up with her.

It wasn't it enough. Dannie knew she couldn't leave the door to help her; if she let go and it shut and locked again, they'd both be dead. Period, end of story. She reached out as far as she could, trying to yank Tess free of the hands pulling her back, but there were just too many. Dannie was looking right at her coworker when one of her attackers managed to lean in and sink its teeth into her arm. Tess shrieked with horror and pain and rage, and then as if the pain was a goad, she finally managed to wrench herself free, practically falling into Dannie and past her out onto the roof.

Dannie was only a step behind her; she paused only for a second to try to slam the door closed again, but it was a futile effort. The freaks were stumbling out and almost on top of her before she could do anything to stop them. Dannie skipped and skidded aside and out of reach of grasping hands and biting teeth with the skill she'd painfully perfected when doing her internship in the children's ward of a psych hospital. It wasn't an experience she'd enjoyed; kids could get vicious when they were pissed and in the midst of psychosis. It was actually helping her now though; she'd learned to dodge the kids, after all, and they had been a hell of a lot more agile than the freaks that tried to attack her now.

She followed Tess across the roof, both of them flailing fists and screaming bloody murder at the monsters around them. Dannie didn't even know what she was shouting frankly; she was too far gone in the panic that had finally overtaken her now that there was no where left to run. Tess shrieked again, this time in shock, and Dannie turned and slammed to a halt as she realized they'd reached the edge of the rooftop.

She'd been wrong to panic before: _now_ there was really no where left to run.

Dannie turned back around to make one last stand against the freaks still lunging for them both in a relentless hunger. She shoved them to either side and past her frantically, desperate to use their weight against them, forcing them to tumble past her and over the edge of the building to plummet god only knew how many stories to the ground below.

Suddenly, a sound forced its way through the haze of terror and her own screams. Gunshots rang out, and both Dannie and Tess stared up in shock and awe at the unmistakable figure of a man hurtling, weapons first, from a helicopter some 40 feet above them. He fired rapidly and he wasn't missing either: all around them, their attackers were dropping like flies, each felled by a single bullet.

"He's insane," Dannie whispered, more than a little impressed by the sheer recklessness of the move. The few remaining freaks seemed to realize they were under attack, and as the man snapped to a halt on his rappelling cord a bare foot above the roof, they turned away from the pair of women still huddling on the edge of the building to face their new enemy. The stranger stood and unhooked himself, sliding the pair of pistols he'd been wielding so accurately back into holsters at his back and then proceeded to finish of the last few freaks with a violently efficient and almost effortless display of martial arts. Behind him, the helicopter lowered only long enough to drop off another three commando looking men, and then lifted off again.

"Hey! Hey are you alright?" The first man approached, arms and hands out as if to soothe a skittish horse. Dannie took a faltering step toward him, picking her way carefully around the corpses littered in front of her. "Step away from the edge and over to me," the stranger called, and Dannie turned a little to see Tess still standing on the edge.

"Tess? What..."

"Everything's OK," the dark man said soothingly, but Tess just shook her head.

"No it's not. I've seen what happens to you once you've been bitten."

Dannie felt her knees grow weak as she realized what Tess must know about the freaks and how the madness was spreading. Tess's arm...

"We can help you," Dannie heard the man try again to talk her coworker off the ledge, but it was no use.

"There's no going back," Tess said and then turned and threw herself from the roof. Dannie screamed out Tess's name and lunged to try to catch her, almost overbalancing herself, but their rescuer, with a shout of his own, lunged just as quickly to stop her and pull her back from toppling over the edge.

"Tess..." Dannie trailed off, staring over the edge at the crumpled form that had landed on the parking garage. She'd really killed herself. Dannie trembled, her mind shuttering away from the sight, even though it was one she had seen before. Some of her patients, both state-side and international, had made that same choice, but it never got easier to see. The pair of hands gripping her arms shook her firmly, and she realized the man was saying something and trying to pull her back farther from the edge. She let him lead her back, and then turned and looked up a good 6 inches to meet the tall man's worried eyes.

"I said are you alright?" He ran his gaze and hands over her, patting her down for any injuries with an impersonal touch. "Have you been bitten?"

She shook her head slowly, shivering a little as shock tried to set in. No, she wasn't alright, but she hadn't been bitten either. He gave her shoulders a comforting squeeze, and smiled grimly, clearly understanding both answers she'd silently given him. One of the other men, a lanky redhead, stepped up to their side, and asked the question she couldn't even begin to contemplate yet.

"What now?"


	2. Stairway to Somewhere

"We need to get off this roof," Dannie's rescuer said. He turned away from her, and then stopped short. "Where the hell is the helo?" The redhead just shook his head and shrugged.

"They lifted off the roof as soon as the team was all grounded."

The darker man, the leader or so Dannie guessed, frowned as he glanced back at the woman he'd saved.

"Is there another way down from here?" he asked, but she could only shake her head no.

"Just the stairs through that door. Well, that or…" Dannie nodded her head to the edge where Tess had so recently chosen another way out. He cursed under his breath, and seemed to consider.

"How many more infected were there inside?"

"I have no idea. I didn't even know they were inside until Tess came running. We were both working late, and I'd finally sent her home. She wasn't gone a full 10 minutes before coming back in a panic. Then we were running for the stairs and…" She shrugged. The men had all seen how that story ended. The redhead eyed her, and then raised an eyebrow at his CO. The shorter man sighed impatient and then matched the redhead's speculative look.

"Yeah, she'll need to come with us. Men, over here," he called, and the other three hustled over to where Dannie and the other two commandos were standing. "Ma'am, I'm Carlos Olivera, CO of U.B.C.S. Alpha Squad. This is my team: Nicholai, Yuri, Taka, and Phil."

"Danielle Walker. Or Dannie," she mentioned in turn, absently. It was odd that they were referring to each other by first name, or so she thought. That certainly wasn't the norm in the military units she'd worked with in the past. Considering 4 out of the 5 names were decidedly exotic, and Nicholai's voice had a distinct accent, it was likely these men were ex-pats from some other country. Maybe mercenaries? She swallowed, feeling a bit intimidated and decidedly tiny as the massive men crowded around her. Military men she was used to, but mercenaries tended to be another animal entirely. At least she could safely say that the leader at least had a decently sized hero complex, unusual in a merc, but it might server her better than otherwise. "So, what are we going to do?" she asked quietly.

"Phil, get back on the comm, and try to get the damn helo back. If not, we'll be going down through the building, and it'll get messy." One of the men, the only one who looked to be as all American as the soldiers she was used to seeing, nodded at Carlos's order and pulled out a radio. "Nicholai, watch the door. Yuri, she's injured." He turned and looked her over again. "You won't get far barefoot; we'll need to-"

"Here." They both started at the Asian man's sudden movement. He was holding out a pair of bright red Converse sneakers, and Dannie's stomach turned as she realized he must have gotten them off of one of the bodies around them.

"Taka…" Carlos said, his face clearly scolding. The shorter man just shrugged.

"She needs shoes." He held them out to her again. "They are clean. I checked."

"Taka, you can't-"

"It's alright," she was surprised to hear herself say. She thought for a moment, and then reached for the shoes. She wondered if Taka was right about them being clean. He might not have been able to tell; they were _really_ red. The thought sparked another, ironically amusing one. "Welcome to Oz, Dorothy."

Carlos and Nicholai half-chuckled half-scoffed behind her, and she offered then a small pained smile before turning back to survey the shoes. She swallowed, not precisely comfortable at the thought of robbing from the dead, but knowing all too well that there wasn't likely any other option. She looked around for a place to sit and then just shrugged to herself. She dropped the shoes and stripped off her blazer, dropping it on a blood-and-corpse free section of the roof. Then she frowned a little and plopped down awkwardly; there was no graceful or lady-like way to sit in the damned skirt, let alone put the shoes on. She maneuvered her legs and finally just hiked the skirt up a bit so she could reach her feet, pointedly ignoring the men who could likely see every inch of her designer underwear at this point. She pulled on the shoes and tied them tightly, surprised they were almost the right size.

"Here, let me help." The new voice startled her, and she looked up to see one of the men, the one named Yuri she thought, standing over her with a handful of bandages and an antiseptic swab. "I should tend to your knee, yes?" She nodded tightly; annoyed to see he was defiantly looking at her legs in what wasn't a strictly professional manner. There wasn't much she could do about it. He knelt down at her side and cleaned and then wrapped her knee efficiently, and she relaxed a little. Then he looked back up with a slimy smile, and she braced herself for him to cop some kind of feel.

"Are you finished?" Carlos's voice broke in from behind them, and Dannie hid a smug smile as she caught a faintly guilty expression cross Yuri's face as he nodded once to his CO. Carlos's hand appeared at her shoulder, and she clasped it with her own and allowed him to lift her easily to her feet. He nodded once to her, and then turned back to gather the men. "Phil, any luck on the radio?" Phil shook his head ruefully, and Carlos scowled faintly. "Down we go then. Dannie, stay in the center of formation, at all times. You have to keep up or we can't protect you. Do you understand?"

She nodded briefly, ignoring the urge to bitch about the condescending tone. He was just concerned about her safety, she reminded herself, and after all he didn't know she was actually relatively used to this sort of thing. She paused, and then decided to tell him, knowing any intel might be useful.

"I do understand. I've done relief work in combat zones. Soldiers with PTSD, trauma victims, children in natural disasters, that sort of thing. I've been on a battlefield; just not quite this close to the front lines." She shrugged at the surprised and considering expressions on the men's faces. "I know how to follow orders, especially if they'll save my ass."

"Fair enough," Carlos said, a smile tugging at his lips as he turned away to nod to the rest of his men. "Taka and I are on point, Phil with our guest, Nicholai and Yuri on our 6."

The men move silently into formation around her and then headed toward the door. Nicholai moved out of position to tug on the door, but it wouldn't budge.

"Locked. What's the code?" Carlos turned and asked her over his shoulder.

"My code's 4026." He nodded sharply, and moved to the pad, hovering his left hand over the numbers while his right hefted the assault rifle toward the door. He counted down 3, 2, 1, then entered the code. Nicholai wrenched the door open instantly, ducking half behind it, and then Taka opened fire on the freaks that were waiting just beyond in the stairwell. Carlos fired as well, as between the pair, they mowed down their opponents in very little time. In the brief silence, Taka stepped over the downed infected and then moved carefully past them into the building, sweeping for any more of them.

"Is clear at this level." Carlos joined him, and then waved the other men and Dannie forward. The team stalked down the stairs with a silent grace, pausing at each floor's emergency door to glance in and check for more infected. They only opened fire a few times in the first few flights: once into the floor itself, and then again as a trio of infected clambered up below them.

Dannie tried to emulate the quiet footsteps of the men, but time and again, she managed to trip as the tight skirt hampered her normal relatively graceful steps. The third time it happened and her faint cry of "shit" broke the silence, Carlos turned around to glare at her impatiently.

"Is it the shoes?"

"The skirt," she answered shortly, not impressed by his frown over something she couldn't control. He surveyed her for a moment.

"Don't move." Then too fast for her to panic or argue, he was pulling a blade and slitting the skirt up the front between the legs to just below her crotch. She actually could feel the cold of the metal just above her knees, and she gasped and forced herself to be still. Carlos removed the blade with a smirk, he tried unsuccessfully to hide. "That should help. Keep moving."

He turned away, and Dannie resisted the urge to push him farther down the stairs. She could hear the sound of smothered laughter behind her, and she glared over her shoulder at the two men bringing up the rear. Nicholai quickly hid the grin, but Yuri was just amused.

"Ignore it. He's always like that," Phil said quietly as they proceeded down the next flight of stairs.

"Which one?" she snapped under her breath. It was _so_ nice to be humiliated. Damned testosterone fueled muscle heads. And damned her freaking legs for proving Carlos right. She was already moving more easily and she'd yet to trip again. She'd cuss him out for it later, assuming she survived, but in all fairness, she would probably have to thank him after that. And better the relatively polite leader than one of the others like, say, Yuri, she admitted.

They continued down the stairs and were nearly down to the ground level when a door just a flight below them slammed open and a mass of infected rushed into the stairwell. Dannie couldn't help a smothered cry of fear; there were easily as many pouring in as had chased Tess to her death, and all were moaning and snarling viciously.

"Back, move back!" Carlos shouted and opened fire, retreating back up the stairs with Taka keeping pace right beside him. The others were moving back as well, firing over the railing to hit the crowded steps below them. Dannie clung to the railing as she tried to keep far enough back that she wouldn't trip either man in front of her. Phil's hand gripped her elbow and steadied her, supporting her weight and drawing her up with him onto the landing at the next floor up.

"Just a few more now," he called to her encouragingly as the men made short work of the half dozen remaining monsters below them. She turned to smile gratefully at him, then screamed as the door beside them slammed open as well. There were fewer infected on the other side than there had been on the floor below, but they poured through the door in a wave and crashed into Phil who was nearest to the door. He shouted out in rage, and reached to shove Dannie clear. She fell down the steps into Carlos who'd turned at the shout. He yanked her between him and Taka, and yelled in rage to his teammate.

"Phil!" With Dannie out of the way, the men opened fire, but it was too late. The infected had reached him, and as Dannie watched in shock, the weight of the figures pushed the man backwards into and then flailing over the railing to fall down the center of the stairway to land on the ground floor with a sickening crunch below. There was a moment of horrified silence as the infected seemed confused by the sudden loss of their prey, but then they turned in a shuffle to face the rest of the team.

"Fire at will," Carlos ordered into the quiet, and then in a rush bullets, the infected were dealt with. As the last one fell to a bullet right between the eyes, Dannie found herself shaking. She caught hold of the back of Carlos's vest, needing something to support her suddenly weak knees. A second person was gone, and she'd now watched both fall to their deaths in the space of barely 10 minutes. Carlos turned at the faint tug on his vest, and nodded to her sadly before glancing about his men. "Anyone else hurt?"

They all shook their heads, and Nicholai and Yuri stepped over the pile of dispatched bodies with a much more solemn air than they'd had only moments before.

"We're fine," Nicholai answered subdued. Carlos ordered them back into formation, and Dannie was once again in the center, this time of four men. The pair behind her stayed much closer for the last few flights to the ground, and she was painfully comforted by the weaponry so close to her. They reached the ground floor and the sick sight of Phil's broken and bleeding body. Carlos was the one to move over and check him for movement, but the other man was clearly dead.

"Guess the fall broke his neck. He won't turn." He hesitated for a moment, and then regretfully reached down to take the battered comm from the fallen man's vest. He straightened and glanced to his remaining men and the one woman stuck trembling in their midst. "Dannie, where's this door open to?"

"It should be the parking garage, I think."

"Alright, everyone keep eyes open." He reached out to pull Dannie close behind him, and then nodded to Nicholai where he waited by the door. "Go."

Nicholai pushed open the door and one by one they all surged through.


	3. Takes a Lickin'

The silent quintet eased into the parking garage, weapons ready in the soldiers' steady hands and the only sound the faint static that would occasionally come from Phil's battered comm. Dannie tried to keep herself as quiet as the men around her, but even her breathing seemed to be fighting her on that one. She'd yet to calm since Phil had taken his unexpected short drop and sudden stop, and her lungs seemed to still be functioning in fight or flight mode. Their surroundings weren't helping her, either. At some point in the panic of the mob of infected invading the building, some of the electrical systems must have gone on the fritz. The lighting down in the garage was flickering on and off like in some B-rated horror film, adding an air of even more eeriness to the current situation. Taka and Carlos led the way down the sloping pavement, past the few cars still parked in their assigned spaces, though Dannie did notice the pair in the lead paused to check under and around each car they passed for possible hidden infected.

Dannie barely noticed as their little band passed her own cute little sports car that now held very little charm for her as Tess had helped pick it out less than a year ago. Dannie forced away the thought before it held too much of her attention; all she allowed herself to vaguely think as they passed it was that there was no way in hell she'd be getting in another convertible on a night like this one. If they ended up in a vehicle, she wanted solid protective walls and a roof around her. Granted, she mused with an eye on her protectors, a sunroof might not be a bad idea. The men could easily stand up and shoot out of something like that. Or so she'd seen in one action movie or another.

A short burst of gunfire brought her slamming out of her reverie, and she noticed Taka passing a single corpse without a second glance. She moved nervously to the side as she and then the pair behind her moved past the corpse in turn. She'd seen no evidence yet that the bastards might move even after a bullet to the brain, but if they could move after looking otherwise dead due to infection, who was to say? In any case, Dannie sure as hell wasn't to take the chance of standing within reach of one of them. Not if she could help it. She kept closer to Carlos after that, trusting in the leader's aim and arsenal just the slightest bit more than the others. She needed that reassurance right about now, with each new infected they saw, and then killed, she was reminded of just how helpless she was.

She found her hands itched for her tiny little Bodyguard model pistol that she usually kept in her purse. When she'd announced her intention to work with the military overseas, her brother had insisted on her knowing how to use a weapon competently. He'd bought her the little handgun, and he'd then ruthlessly trained her until she could accurately empty the entirety of the tiny weapon's 6 shots in the clip and 1 in the chamber into the target's forehead. That she'd never actually used that training during her relief work wasn't important; the lessons and practice had grown into their weekly Friday lunch sibling date, one she'd never missed since they started the tradition a couple years prior. Carlos opened fire again, this time on a trio of infected huddled awkwardly around an SUV, and it occurred to her that she'd likely be missing that tradition tomorrow. It was all too likely that her brother would end up among the missing, too. She shivered and fought back tears at the thought, hoping the men hadn't noticed.

She forced away the melancholy thoughts, and tried to distract herself by guessing how many different types of weapons the men might had tucked into their uniforms. That didn't help her mood all that much, as the concept only reminded her that she had exactly zero weapons stored about her own person. She resolved to ask the men to give her a pistol, a knife, hell just _something_ resembling a weapon as soon as they reached a pause in their trek.

Finally, she was pleased to see the guard stand at the bottom of the garage, signaling a halt to their slightly dizzying descent from the 3rd floor to the street level. Carlos and Taka approached the booth cautiously, clearly keeping an eye on both the guard stand's sliding door and the entrance to the street itself. Dannie almost followed close behind them, but Nicholai's hand on her shoulder kept her still.

"Open space could mean an ambush. Wait until they check it out," he whispered down to her, and she nodded silently, moving backwards slightly to place herself in the more protected position between the redhead and Yuri. She kept her eyes fixed on the pair in the lead, feeling her heart rate quicken without warning at her anxiety for the men. It wasn't that surprising their health had become her problem; if even one of their little band fell, the odds of any of them surviving the night would drop that much lower. And fuck if she didn't know the odds of survival were pretty damned low to begin with.

Carlos inched toward the guard booth with Taka covering him. He was nearly to the door hanging just ajar when a snarling four-legged figure hurled itself out of the booth through the window.

"Son of a bitch!" None of them blamed Carlos for the outburst, nor Taka for the spattering of Japanese curses that followed as they fired on the charging creature. Finally the thing lay dead, and almost as one, the five of them crept close to peer at it.

"Was that a goddamned cocker spaniel?" Yuri asked, clearly offended by the very idea.

"Looks like. Apparently the infection is transferring to animals, too. Great," Carlos answered, his face just as disgusted. He shook his head and straightened. "Come on, let's keep moving. There's nothing else here."

He moved into the lead again, pausing at the garage entrance, and then waving the others forward. They turned onto the empty street, and Dannie rubbed her arms as the eerie quiet sent a chill down her spine. At least it was the only chill, she noted. She normally got cold easy, but the heat wave was keeping her relatively comfortable even in the skirt and thin cap-sleeved shirt.

What almost sounded like the wind echoed down the street, and Dannie paused, barely noting that the men had paused with her. Was that _moanin_ g _?_ It only took a moment for the significance of the sound to sink in, and then Carlos was ordering them to move. Together the quintet sprinted for an alley way, ducking down the narrow passage as a crowd of infected turned onto the street they'd just been on. There was no way of knowing if the infected had seen or sensed them, and the group of soldiers and single civilian keep up a brisk pace, running down the alley and then turning onto another, even more deserted back street. They slowed to a jog and then to a walk, and then came to a halt, Dannie stumbling to lean against a wall.

"You all right there Dannie?" Carlos called quietly, and she waved his slightly superior concern away, still too winded to reply. She had _not_ signed up for long distance sprinting, and damned if she didn't need a minute to catch her breath.

She didn't get it; Carlos was turning away, the smirk once again on his face, when Taka let out a strangled shout and a mutilated monstrous something came leaping into their midst. The men opened fire, more on instinct than with a clear clue of what the fuck their attacker was. Under the rain of gunfire, the gruesome thing fell fairly quickly, but another shout, this time from Dannie as she stared upwards in horror warned the men that the monster had not been alone.

This one seemed smarter, or at least more agile. It jumped and ducked, avoiding the bullets the men were firing desperately. Dannie just tired to stay clear and out of their way, praying to God she wouldn't be a distraction to any of the men as they faced off with that thing. She did, of course, but damned if it wasn't her fault. It was the creature's. It leapt from one building to another across the alley way, landing and then clambering down the fire escape directly above Dannie. An enormously long tongue whipped out and down, grabbing her knot of hair and lifting her screaming from the ground, pulling her up toward a gaping mouth.

Gunfire sounded again, this time terrifyingly in her direction. Dannie didn't know whether she was screaming about the creature with its tongue in her hair or the bullets flying past far too close for comfort, all she knew was that she was terrified and helpless.

There was a garbled roar of pain above her and then she was dropping painfully back to the concrete, parts of a long whippy tongue falling down on top of her. She scrambled backwards just in case the creature decided to chase after its escaped meal, instinctively craving the comfort of the wall, though it hadn't been much help before. A creak of abused metal suddenly cut through the sound of gun fire, and she looked up again, her mouth open in shock as the fire escape creaked again and began to fall.

For just a moment everything seemed to stop, and she could have sworn the world itself when silent as the metal began to crash towards her.

"I'm going to die," she mouthed. Then she was hit by a solid dark mass, lunging in and throwing her clear of the collapsing structure. She was tucked under a larger body, and she simply held on as the crash of the fire escape and the hopefully deceased creature slammed into the pavement only a few feet from them.

There was another moment of silence, this time genuine, as the survivors collectively held their breath, as if unsure they'd really managed to escape this last round of death and destruction. Finally, Dannie coughed, clearing her throat of the dust the crash had thrown up. As if that was a cue, the men began coughing and cursing around her as well.

"Fucking shit," she breathed, too out of breath to really yell. "What the fuck were those things?" From where he'd landed more than half on top of her, Carlos shook his head.

"Not a clue." He pushed himself shakily to his feet and offered her a hand. She took it with a faint sense of déjà vu, and stood even less steadily than he had.

"I think the file called them 'lickers.'" Nicholai stumbled up from their far side, easing around the fallen monster and twisted metal with a look of distaste.

"Lickers. Really." It was far from the title Dannie would have chosen for the monsters, but Nicholai seemed unfazed.

"Lickers. For the tongues, you see?" He made the motion of a long tongue falling out of his mouth, and then to her mild shame, Dannie started to giggle. It went on longer than she'd expected, her giggles giving way to hysterical laughter as the sight of yet another creature, this time having met a truly gruesome end right in front of her, sunk in. The laughter dragged on and tears began pouring down her cheeks, and she tried to bring herself under control, knowing she was finally falling prey to shock and hating that the soldiers around her were witnessing it.

"At least someone is having fun." Yuri's voice was cold, and something made her laughter die in her throat. Nicholai glared at the other man, but Dannie frankly was gratefully he'd shaken her out of her hysteria. Still, something in his voice spoke of more than just cruelty. She looked up at the harsh soldier, and then looked around, realizing their little band was one man short.

"Taka?" she asked quietly, wanting to be wrong, but already knowing the truth. Yuri shook his head sharply and then glanced behind him. She stepped over to the huddled form he'd indicated, ignoring Carlos's soft call for her not to look. Taka lay there in pieces, his head less than a yard away from the second of the disgusting creatures' corpses. Dannie couldn't help it: she took a few faltering steps and then vomited against the wall of the alley. She was dimly aware of someone's strong hands holding her hair and their leader's voice softly whispering that it wasn't her fault. She was grateful to Carlos for the sentiment at least, but she couldn't help but think he was wrong.

"Maybe it is her fault." Clearly Yuri agreed with her. The scowling soldier went on, not caring that the subject of discussion stood right in their midst. "If we hadn't left the helo for her and the other, our men would still be alive."

Carlos waited for Dannie to straighten and then handed her a canteen he'd detached from some portion of his gear she hadn't had reason to notice thus far. She took it gratefully and unscrewed the cap and took a swig to rinse her mouth out once, and then twice. Only after she took one last actual drink and handed it back did he turn and face his sullen subordinate.

"Yuri, think for a moment. Listen." Carlos nodded up and down the alley way. "What do you hear? Not much, huh? Not even from the comm." He shrugged and clipped his canteen back on his hip. "If we'd moved on as ordered, I'm not sure any of us would be left by now."

Yuri opened his mouth as if to argue, but instead he let the silence sink over them. Dannie didn't blame him.


	4. Over Fire

The group, now whittled down to a quartet, stood in silence in the wake of Carlos's admonishment. It was an uneasy silence this time, unlike the focused quiet of their trek through the parking garage. This quiet, Dannie knew, only meant that none of them knew what to say to each other. She certainly didn't; hell, she wasn't even sure she knew how to meet the mens' eyes. She turned away, and wiped at her mouth again with the back at her hand, still more than half convinced she could taste vomit on her own breath. Her throat was still raw, even if the taste was all in her head. She shook her head at herself, and her long hair flopped into her face, causing her to frown. The licker had really fucked up her up-do. She pulled her hair the rest of the way down and attempted to pin it back into a knot. It wasn't as tight as it had been, she realized ruefully, but at least this way it wouldn't obstruct her vision. She wished absently that she had some kind of a hair tie so she could just braid it back, but those had been in her purse. Along with her phone to call her likely to already be dead brother, and breath mints for her vomit breath, and bandages for the new scrapes on her other knee, and… and… and just something like normalcy. She turned back to find the men pointedly not watching her or meeting each other's eyes. Her gaze lingered on their weaponry, and for a moment she thought of her purse again, and one other much missed item.

"I need a gun." That she'd actually said it out loud surprised her almost as much as it did the men. All three jumped, startled out of their personal brooding. She found herself rather glad the hoard they'd run from hadn't actually followed them; none of their group had been much up to keeping track of their surroundings. Now they were paying attention again, or at least attention to her. Yuri sneered at her, not that Dannie would have expected anything else; Nicholai looked skeptical; and Carlos, well, Carlos looked calculating. It was much the same look that she'd seen on him when he and Nicholai had decided to take her with them from the roof, and Dannie hoped that was a good sign in this case. Carlos studied her a moment.

"Do you know how to use one?" he finally asked, no hint of his thoughts in his voice. Yuri opened his mouth, clearly wanting to argue, but Carlos just shut him down with a single solemn look before turning back to Dannie. "Be honest with me. We don't have time for more than a crash course, and an amateur with a weapon could be dangerous to the rest of us."

Dannie took a breath to settle herself under the weight of his steady gaze and then nodded.

"My brother… Derek's a cop, Dad was military. When I set up to go overseas, they got me a concealed carry course."

"Caliber?"

".380 in a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard pistol," she answered without hesitation, then waited for the 'manly men' to make the expected quips. Yuri was quick to take advantage of that.

"Cute. That's more of an accessory than a weapon. It would hardly do anything but tickle an attacker."

"It will do a hell of a lot more if you aim in the right place, and I do. Are _you_ accurate enough to do damage with something that small?" Dannie shot back, irritated despite expecting it. Carlos shook his head sharply at the scowling pair before Yuri could continue the verbal battle.

"Enough." As much as it annoyed her to do so, Dannie obeyed the steely order, vaguely wondering just how she'd managed to end up as subordinate to the dark man as the others were. Carlos flicked his eyes between Yuri and Dannie as if daring either of them to speak again. Then he nodded to himself, and reached back to draw one of his pistols from its holster and held it out to Dannie.

She took it gingerly, forcing herself to hide her apprehension. The 9 mm handgun was definitely larger than her little Bodyguard. _That_ hadn't been all that much bigger than her palm, but _this_ … this had some heft to it. She double checked that the safety was on, and then released the clip to check how many rounds were left. Satisfied that she had more than half a clip left, she shoved it back in smoothly, and then gripped the weapon properly with her right hand ready to squeeze the trigger, but not too close for the safety of those around her. Finally relatively comfortable with the larger handgun, she looked up to find all three men studying her with a considering air. She swallowed, a little unnerved by the attention, but then straightened her shoulders and stared back.

"Extra clips?" she asked with as forced smile. Carlos pulled a couple from one of the many pockets on his ammo belt, and handed them to her. Dannie shoved one into each of her skirt pockets carefully, hoping they'd actually stay in. Her pockets weren't exactly intended to hold anything like this after all. Fairly certain she wouldn't need to hold anything else now, she wrapped her empty left hand around the bottom of the 9 mm and her right hand, steadying the unfamiliar weight as she'd been taught. Dannie was all too aware that after a while she'd need that extra steadiness. Even the recoil on her little Bodyguard was hell on her tiny wrists after a while. The 9 mm was probably going to hurt. So be it. It was sure as hell better than being unarmed. She took a deep breath and then lifted her eyes to the men again. Yuri didn't look all that convinced, but Nicholai seemed grudgingly respectful at her competent handling on the weapon thus far.

"Alright then. Hold your fire unless you're sure of a kill shot. We'll need to save ammo," Carlos said gruffly, his eyes proud though the rest of his face was carefully schooled into impassiveness. Dannie just nodded, encouraged by his words, though she didn't bother to say so. "Let's move out. Yuri on our 6, Nicholai and Dannie take the center. I'll take point."

Carlos paused for only a moment by Taka's body, a solemn look on his face. He muttered something under his breath than almost sounded like an apology, but then leaned down to take the fallen man's dog tags and refill his own pouches with as much of Taka's ammo as he could hold. Yuri ground his teeth behind her, but as he and Nicholai passed the body, they did the same. Dannie didn't have room to carry anything else, but she thought a prayer for him as she passed, though she found she couldn't actually stand to look at his mutilated body again. Once had been more than enough, and they didn't have time for her to be sick again.

Her head cocked to the side as the now familiar moaning began to fill her hearing. Now they really didn't have time. The men picked up their pace to a slow jog as they trekked through the back alleys and side streets, barely pausing to gun down the scattered groups of infected they encountered. Dannie gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep up. She hadn't needed to fire yet; the men's automatic weapons could drop the infected at a farther distance and with a hell of a lot more speed than her pistol. She just held on and waited; with the way the night had gone so far, there was no doubt she'd need the weapon eventually.

The team ducked across a larger street and the moaning grew to a roar. Dannie had only a moment to look, but the sheer number of infected filling the streets had her nearly faltering from absolute fear. Yuri was at her back though, a hand on her shoulder shoving her forward before she could stumble to a halt.

"Keep moving!" he ordered, and she snapped back to the present, forcing the panic down with a nod to him over her shoulder. Yuri dropped back into the tail guard position, and as the hoards began to pour down the alley behind them at that painful shuffling run, Nicholai dropped back behind to join him. Carlos turned half to look as the trailing men opened fire, both of them forced to slow to a careful backwards march as they aimed and fired. Their leader slowed too, boxing Dannie back in between them with a bare glance.

She now turned her gaze back and forth to either side, keeping track of anything threat that might come from that direction to take her men the way Phil had been taken. She too finally opened fire, the 9 mm bucking into life in her hands as they passed a small cul de sac with a trio of infected shuffling their way. Despite the pain that caused her to grimace at the much stronger kick of the heavy pistol, her aim was true, and each infected dropped with a bullet to the head. She allowed herself to think for a brief moment that her brother would have been proud, but then she had to move again as Yuri and Nicholai almost drew abreast of her, still firing steadily to the rear.

Dannie began to wonder vaguely where the hell they were going to go with infected at every turn, but then the sound of squealing tires and gun fire began to echo ahead of them, and she guessed Carlos was likely making his way to that sign of other armed survivors. Voices crackled from the damaged radio in their leader's vest, a garbled message of something about 'rendezvous' and 'secure against' coming through, though she couldn't be quite sure of what she was hearing in the din of gunfire and infected. Carlos seemed to, though; his steps quickened after he heard the message, and he shouted back an order to the men to double time it. They abandoned their attack on the few infected left behind them and began to run with Dannie keeping as close to Carlos's heels as she dared. Flashing red and blue lights flickered at the alley entrance, and the team burst out onto a busy street into sheer chaos. Carlos immediately opened fire down the street with Nicholai kneeling at his side, his gun blazing too. Yuri turned back to face the alley again, covering their rear against any attack from that end.

Dannie could barely move, the weapon trembling in her hands. She'd been able to handle the near-panicked retreat, but this… this was a war zone. All around her bullets were flying as more and more police and S.T.A.R.S. officers poured out of armored trucks and police cars and rappelled down from helicopters to fill the street. She was relatively safe in the center of the madness, but every shout of fear and rage and every new blast of gun fire had her flinching. She held her fire, knowing she'd be unlikely to hit anything in her shaking state. A sudden shout from Carlos's drew her gaze, and then Nicholai was forcing her down to the ground with an arm over her head as an explosion ripped through the street.

"Grenade," the redhead shouted into her ear in explanation and she nodded in comprehension. "Stay down!"

He pushed her toward one of the parked cop cars, and she knelt pressed up against the front wheel, Nicholai bracing his weapon on the hood beside and above her. She gripped her 9 mm tightly and tried desperately to stay out of the tall redhead's way as he guarded both of their positions. Now she didn't dare fire; even if she could steady her hands, she'd have to risk shooting toward the backs of the men around her. The rain of bullets continued as the hoards of infected forced their way closer despite everything the defenders could do. She forced herself to look away from the more anonymous police officers. It was likely she knew at least some of them, but in the heat of the onslaught, she couldn't stand to care for anyone else but the men who'd protected her so far. She locked her eyes on those three, watching for any attack she might need to warn them of, wishing there was anything else she might do.

Under her watchful eyes Carlos and Yuri emptied their magazines almost as one, and both cursed and reached to re-load. Their eyes were focused on their weapons, and thus Dannie was the only one to see the metal door at Yuri's back slam off its hinges under the weight of an infected. Both plowed into the soldier, and he went sprawling.

"Yuri," she screamed, suddenly terrified for the man she could barely tolerate. Carlos half turned at her shout, and then shifted back to Yuri who Dannie was terrified to see was being bitten right before her eyes. Then there was a flash of metal and a long throwing knife was buried in the infected's forehead. She had only a moment to wonder where the hell Carlos had pulled the blade from, and then Yuri was pulling the pin from a grenade and tossing it half heartedly down the alley. Dannie's eyes widened at just how close the explosive landed, and she reached up to jerk Nicholai down as Carlos lunged to pull the door up to shield himself and his fallen comrade.

Then the blast went off, nearly blinding her in an orange flash, the roar of sound all but deafening her for a moment. She could feel the heat of the blast just beyond Nicholai's sheltering form and she shuddered at the thought of Carlos and Yuri so close. She prayed the door was enough to keep both of them safe from the flash of fire, but she couldn't look far enough over Nicholai's shoulder to see if they were unharmed. Once the wash of heat faded, Nicholai hauled himself back up, and Dannie looked to see Carlos practically lifting Yuri back to his feet. Then she shouted again as the shadowy form of an infected suddenly loomed on the momentarily unarmed pair. Nicholai spun and put a bullet right between the attacker's eyes, and she let out a shuddering sigh of relief.

Then she looked around, and her heart all but stopped in her chest again. The rally point was being overrun. There was no longer any way to count the hundreds of infected pouring relentlessly into the sparse wall of gunfire. She could tell that even the superior weaponry wasn't going to save the defenders for long. Already men were being dragged down at the edges of the line. Soon the infected would even reach the protected center were she and her men were. She caught a glimpse of Carlos looking around as he finally slammed a fresh magazine home, the frown on his face saying he saw the same fate she did.

"Back, fall back!" Nicholai and Yuri both surged back down the same alley way the quartet had run from in the first place, and Carlos took only a moment to drag Dannie to her feet and shove her past him as he took tail guard. Dannie forced herself to follow the pair in front of her as they fired on the approaching infected.

There were still attackers facing them down the alley, but those were far less in number than the hoard in the street they'd just left. Dannie swallowed and hoped less would be enough for them to survive.


	5. Once Bitten, Twice as Screwed

Yuri and Nicolai led the way, muzzles flashing as they fired on the infected that were still scattered about the alley from the soldiers' earlier flight. Behind Dannie, Carlos opened fire, and she risked a glance back to see yet another crowd of freaks following them from the massacre behind them. The numbers of infected were drastically rising in the alley, and she looked around them frantically for another way out. Yuri and Nicholai passed a side entrance, and without waiting to ask permission, she darted half way down it, on the look out for more infected, but thankfully finding none.

"This way!" Dannie called back, and she heard Carlos echoing her words to the others. She waited for them to catch up to her, her pistol not quite shaking in her hands as she realized how far away from the others she'd managed to get for that moment. Carlos gripped her shoulder as he passed her, and she nodded to him gratefully as she fell back into her now familiar position in the surviving soldiers' formation. She heard Nicholai and Yuri's heavy boot steps splashing through the water and muck on the street beneath them, and breathed out a sigh she hadn't realized she'd been holding in when neither of them opened fire. It looked like they'd managed to slip into the side street far enough ahead of the horde that they might actually manage to escape, at for least the moment.

Ahead of her, Carlos turned down now yet another side street, and she mused absently that she'd had no idea the city she'd lived in for most of her adult life was such a maze of thoroughfares. That was only for the good tonight; had they been forced to keep to the main drags, they likely would have been sitting ducks against all of the now infected populace. Raccoon City was _not_ a small town; the sheer number of residents only meant a higher chance of the number of infected skyrocketing.

"This's Olivera, we've been overrun. Request immediate chopper evac. I repeat, request immediate chopper evac." Dannie was quietly impressed that Carlos managed to keep his voice relatively steady as he radioed in the call for help. Hell, she was impressed he managed to get the battered radio working at all. Between Phil's fall and Carlos throwing the both of them out of the way of the catwalk, she'd half figured it'd barely be useful beyond the staticy in-coming signal that had led them to the fallen rally point. Apparently she'd underestimated the military tech.

Or not, she thought bitterly. It wasn't like anyone was answering them now, and the incoming signal and calls for reinforcements had faded out into nothing. Either the radio was as dead as their fallen comrades, or everyone else was as un-dead as the infected they'd had to deal with this far. Neither option was the slightest bit encouraging. She found herself hoping the radio was just too fried to work, preferring that to the thought that the four of them alone had survived the infection thus far.

Well, three of the four, she thought worriedly. Yuri was faltering, the wound on his arm already dark and unhealthy looking, and he was getting weaker by the moment. Part of her wondered if they should just kill him now. It wasn't a happy thought, and most of her was sickened that it had even occurred to her, but really, what other choice would they have? He _was_ infected; clearly Tess had been right about the infection transferring via bite or so Dannie judged from the way the soldiers had responded to her words. And if Yuri was infected, then it wasn't a matter of _if_ he would turn, but _when_. Having him with them left all of them in even greater danger, and she wondered why neither Nicholai nor Carlos seemed to have realized it.

Oh hell, maybe they had and just couldn't bear to mention it. God knew, she wasn't going to come out and say it, and she didn't have the bond with the man that his comrades would. She shuddered, hating the thought of it. She made a quiet vow to herself that if she was bitten, she'd separate from the men and quietly eat one of the bullets in the 9mm. Dannie would not, could not, fathom harming anyone. Especially not the men who'd risked their lives for her.

Ahead of her, as if picking up the rapidly declining mood of Dannie and his men, Carlos tried to the radio again and again, his voice growing less calm and more agitated the longer his calls went without answer. Dannie was about to suggest he just give it up and they search for a way out of the city on their own, when the roar of a chopper broke the silence around them. Carlos broke into a grin of triumph.

"Come on, we have to get out in the open," he called back to the trio behind him, and he and Nicholai picked up the pace and jogged out of the alleyway to the main street ahead, popping flares and waving their arms like lunatics and yelling at the top of their lungs. Dannie held back as, despite her worry for her own safety, she was drawn to stay near Yuri who had fallen back a few steps behind the rest of them. She wasn't going to leave him behind if she didn't have to. He looked in even worse shape now, leaning against the building beside them as if it was the only thing keeping him standing.

"Hey, hang in there, alright?" she told him, moving to offer him her shoulder to lean on as well as the wall. He nodded to her, and she felt almost sick at the sheer painful gratitude on his face now, when before there had been only contempt. The fact that he could stand the civilian's assistance - let alone welcome it - could not be a good sign for how much longer he'd make it. They need to get him medical help now if there was any hope for him at all. She glanced back to the street and the pair of soldiers there, and was startled to see them coming back at a run.

"The chopper's heading that way – looks like they're aiming for one of the buildings," Nicholai told her as Carlos reached out to take Yuri's weight from her, muttering encouragement to his teammate. That left she and Nicholai to take guard for their leader and the wounded man he was more than half carrying, and she prayed silently that she'd be up to the task if needed. She followed the men out into the street and looked where Nicholai had pointed out the helicopter's direction. She recognized the building in question and hoped it was a good sign.

"That's the hospital – there's a Life-flight chopper pad up there. That should be where they land," she said. Carlos nodded, and this time she took the lead for once knowing exactly where they needed to be heading. It was an odd feeling, and one she was pretty damned sure she wasn't comfortable with. She hoped Carlos would be free to take charge again once Yuri was out of his hands. Dannie did not want to have to make any further choices in destination. She just wasn't equipped for that.

They'd almost reached the doors of the huge building when the chopper suddenly roared back overhead this time heading away from the hospital.

"What the fuck? Where are they going?" Dannie yelled, outrage making her forget to keep quiet. Nor was she the only one, Nicholai and Carlos cursed right along with her, all of them totally confused as to what the hell had just happened. After a second, Carlos seemed to remember something.

"They dropped something inside. Did anyone see it?" Dannie shook her head no, same as the other two. "Let's take a look. Might be something we can use."

"Like a radio that actually works," Nicholai said bitterly, taking the burden of Yuri from Carlos while their leader moved to check the doors. They were unlocked.

Of course they were unlocked, Dannie thought with a wry shake of her head as she held open the door for Nicholai and Yuri and then closed it quickly behind them. It was a hospital – in the midst of any kind of epidemic, this would be the one place that _didn't_ close their doors to the sick and infected. She just hoped that those infected had left the building by now. It seemed fairly likely considering the quiet around them. Tiled halls like the one they were in didn't muffle sound all that much; she figured they'd have heard anyone else approaching them long before they could actually see them.

The quartet moved as quickly as they could down the hallway, but they were slowed by Yuri whose condition was declining even further, to the point that Nicholai was practically carrying him and having to stop every other step or so to hitch the shorter man back up higher on his shoulders. Dannie glanced back at the pair almost constantly, more worried for Nicholai at this point than Yuri. She highly doubted they were going to find anything that could help him now and she could only seem to care about the distance between his teeth and Nicholai's exposed throat only inches away.

She caught Carlos checking back over his shoulder as well, and they shared a worried look that Dannie hoped their injured companion couldn't see. It was getting frighteningly close to the inevitable now. She swallowed down the growing unease with every step, the fact that nothing had jumped out yet almost making her paranoia worse. This was the longest they'd gone yet without having to fight for their lives, and in every action or horror movie she'd ever seen, that tended to be a bad sign.

The building wasn't helping either. Like her office building and its parking garage, the power seemed to be out for the most part, with only a few random observation rooms seeming to still have any electricity at all. That or the equipment ran on some form of battery power; damned if she knew. Either way, she was grateful for the flashlights on the soldiers' weapons. It just seemed darker in the halls than it had out in the streets.

The group finally ventured out into an open atrium and there, surrounded by broken glass from the windows above, were a pair of massive metal trunks. Dannie vaguely heard Nicholai settling Yuri on a relatively glass free patch of floor, but she was too intrigued by the trunks to really pay attention. The damn things were huge. She flipped one open and frowned, recognizing the padded interior.

"It looks like weapon cases," Carlos said quietly from beside the other case, and Dannie nodded her agreement. They looked just like the case for her pistol, only on a much larger scale. She leaned in and picked up a short length of several really large caliber rounds.

"Is it just me or does this look like what you'd use in a chain gun?" she asked, almost under her breath. She was fairly sure she went unheard though, as Nicholai had burst into an angry rant and a minor moment of violence against the cases.

"These weren't meant for us," Carlos decided with a terrifying kind of finality. Dannie opened her moth to ask who they were for then, but she didn't get the chance to finish her question.

With a feral snarl and a blur of motion far too fast for the sick man he'd been just moments before, Yuri lunged in and bit Carlos on the arm. Dannie screamed and jumped back, slamming into the case and barely keeping her footing as her earlier fears were painfully realized. Carlos shook his now-turned comrade off of him and he and Nicholai both aimed at their former friend. What was left of Yuri gathered itself and Dannie felt everything in her screaming for the two men to fire. Why the hell were they hesitating? Then Yuri lunged for Nicholai, and the redhead fired point blank into the infected's mouth dropping him instantly.

In the moment after, Dannie's near-hyperventilation was the only sound in the room. She tried to quiet herself, but just couldn't. After a moment, she gave in and leaned over to put her head between her knees, trying to calm her breath. After her breathing had settled somewhat, a hand came down on her shoulder, and Carlos helped her straighten.

"I'm sorry… I'm sorry- I just…" she trailed off, seeing understanding in the eyes of both of the surviving soldiers. There wasn't anything to say, really. Her eyes trailed down from Carlos's face to his arm and the ghastly wound, and she fought the urge to panic again. Three men down, and soon, unless they encountered a miracle, they'd lose Carlos, too.

She reached up to grip his hand still on her shoulder, and then closed her eyes and prayed.


End file.
